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ELON MUSK, THE CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, has an idea for how to colonize Mars and make it habitable for humankind.
On “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” Colbert compared Musk to Tony Stark, the fictional tech tycoon who also happens to be Iron Man. ”Are you really trying to save the world?” Colbert asked Musk.
Colbert then asked Musk why people should want to live on Mars. Mars is “a fixer-upper of a planet,” Musk replied.
But people could theoretically live there, he said, by warming it up in one of two ways.
The fastest way to heat up Mars, according to Elon Musk, is to ”drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles.” The slower way would be to introduce greenhouse gases to Mars to warm it up over a number of years.
“You’re a supervillain!” Colbert said in response. “Superman doesn’t say ‘let’s drop nuclear bombs.’ That’s Lex Luthor, man.”
Besides discussing the possibility of nuking Mars to make it hospitable for humans, Colbert told his studio audience that he thinks Musk should run for US president. Musk’s particular vision of the future — dropping nuclear bombs on Mars to make it more habitable and all — “truly moved” Colbert, he said.
The notion of dropping nuclear bombs on Mars to make it habitable is only one of Musk’s stranger ideas. He’s also voiced his concern about robots potentially destroying humankind. To that end, he’s pledged $10 million for research to make sure AI doesn’t turn out evil.
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Cool. And there’s nothing strange anout being concerned about A.I. Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking share his concern.
Elon Musk is an all round awesome dude pushing humanity forward.
Id be more concerned about deing influenced by other people through brain computer interfacing than being taken over by some super AI.
Its facebook AI you need to worry about.
Seriously.
This guy is awesome. A real game changer that will succeed where most won’t even try.
The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty forbids launching nuclear weapons into space. As John F. Kennedy said at the time *que Boston drawl* “The laaast thing we need… is an aaahrms-race in space”.
Musk might find a way around the regulations. India for example hasn’t signed the NTBT so he might be able to launch from something from there. However if any such nuclear-laden rocket failed to make it to orbit and crashed back to earth or exploded over Asia the results could be disastrous.
It is only a weapon if it is designed for military use.
I would imaginr they would 5o it from orbit of mars. way too much crap could go wrong otherwise. Also not sure what the NTBT says about launching *from* space.
Not true Ben Gunn. This treaty has prevented the use of one of the most promising forms of propulsion ever proposed. The nuclear pulse engine could potentially accelerate a craft to 10% of the speed of light and less ambitious versions would give us craft that can traverse the solar system without having to rely on gravity assist maneuvers.
You beat me too it Jake. Ben, Google “Project Orion”. It was the most ambitious nuclear rocket program ever attempted and it had the kibosh put on it by the NTBT. It was feared it would set off a nuclear arms race in space.
The NTBT bans all testing in the atmosphere of any device capable of causing a nuclear explosions. Only nuclear reactors not containing fissile material are permitted, devices like the radioisotope based heat generators they use on space probes and landers.
Mad as a brush !!
Cool.
We could transfer all our greenhouse gases to Mars saving earth in the process and creating a habitable alternative when this planet gets too overpopulated.
A win win situation.
delta-v.
I can’t imagine nuking anything is the “best” option….. he is certainly pushing boundaries in terms of saving the planet Earth but possibly at the detriment of another planet? (& whatever possible effects altering another planet will have on the solar system as a whole…)
Zoe, with the possible exception of Jupiter (and astrology not withstanding) the individual planets of the solar system don’t really effect each other. At their closest approach the earth and mars are like 2 footballs over a mile apart.
And even the most powerful nuclear bombs ever made are billions of times too weak to shift mars in its orbit by even a centimetre. So whatever happens to mars, short of blowing it to bits (and unless Elon Musk is developing a “Death Star” we don’t need to worry about that) it won’t be effecting anything on earth.
The main drawback of altering mars surface with nuclear weapons or any other method is that it would destroy forever the opportunity of studying mars as it is now. Mars is like a time machine. Scientists could use it to discover a lot about how rocky planets form and develop and what earth might have been like before life evolved.
It’s also still possible that Mars harbours simple life forms below its surface. If so radically altering its atmosphere mightn’t do any such organisms much good at all. When Oxygen first appeared in earths atmosphere is poisoned most of the life forms that existed here at the time.
Would’ve it be awful to discover the remains of alien life on Mars only then to discover that it was human activity that had had killed it off!?
I don’t think Mars has any life. What water was found on the planet is too ascidic to support life we would be better off trying to develop hyper speed or warp spead to visit goldylocks planets like keplar that have the same environment that earth does
Based in the available evidence your probably right Ciaran, but they’ve still only just scratched the surface of Mars.
Life has been found on earth living in all sorts of extreme environments including off of volcanic under sea vents at temperatures above 100C and also in lake Vostok which is a sub-glacial lake in Antarctica that has been sealed under a mile of ice for the last 25 million years.
So whose to say that some form of acid-resistant life hasn’t evolved somewhere beneath Mars surface? Whose to say that there aren’t pockets of less acidic ice beneath Mars polar caps that might harbour life?
Thanks Tadgh! Its all very fascinating…….
I dunno, if the life we might find there is going to evolve into a rape apologist like yourself Tadgh, I think it’s better off nuked.
I thought Elon Musk was a perfume..
These ideas only seem strange to unthinking people.
not strange – unworkable
They’d have to change the law to allow Foreigners to run for U.S President. He’s a South African. Same reason stopped the Terminator.
who was the idiot who put colbert in charge?
Children are starving…
Are you suggesting we nuke them?
I starving, guess its time for breakfast
Yawn. That has been trotted out every time anyone has a bit of ambition. Redirecting ambition away from great endeavours isn’t going to remove the corruption, war and greed that lies at the root of starvation. Work on energy sources for electric cars could solve drought issues by making desalination cheaper. A rising tide lifts all boats.
Martian Children don’t even get to watch Bosco reruns.
Children are, indeed, starving. Now, imagine the harsh conditions that exist on Mars and how difficult it will be to grow food. Next, imagine the technological innovations that will be necessary to overcome that problem. Finally, take the next step and see what that could do for starving children when such technology is applied on Earth. The whole space industry has given us so much that have alleviated so much poverty, such as microwaves, improved communications, transport and other technologies. It’s not the space industry we need to shut down. It’s the overspend on the military that we need to curtail.
Sorry, Elon, but that won’t work. The low atmospheric density means that the heat would not spread as easily and would, in fact, dissipate into space quite quickly. Plus, it’s an entire planet that needs to be warmed up. You would need thousands of nuclear detonations to warm the planet even by as much as 5 degrees. The best way to terraform/colonise Mars is to establish small enclosed colonies for the interim period, while releasing greenhouse gases, genetically modified bacteria and other micro-organisms and, possibly, nanotech. Plus, as someone mentioned above, the lack of a magnetic field would lead to any nascent human-friendly atmosphere simply being stripped away.
To have any chance of it working they’d need to get all the bombs under the ice caps and then detonate them all at once. That way all or most of the heat would be released into the planet and a maximal amount of Co2 and water vapour would be realised at one time, giving the planet it’s best chance to heat up. Otherwise the small amounts of greenhouse gasses released from any one detonation would soon refreeze.
They do have a bunker buster bomb now called the MOP that can supposedly penetrate 200 feet of concrete.However, the casing of the bomb alone (from which it derives it’s penetrative power) weighs about 15 tons… And as you say it would take thousands of bombs to heat the planet up even a relatively small amount.
They’d need to decommission pretty much the entire nuclear arsenals of both the U.S and Russia, fly them to mars reassemble them and then fire them at the ice caps. Even if it were possible It’s not going to happen, the U.S and Russia would never just give up their arsenals.
Good lad
Ok Elon lets nuke Mars together, are we still talking about fried Mars bars?? Eh no men on Mars…..
Wont work Elon. Weak, almost non existant magnetic field on Mars. any atmosphere that is seeded will be stripped away by cosmic rays.
Musk is a self publicist business man. This is nonsense
He should seal off mars for a archaeological dig first then ya can blow it up
A Columbia Space Shuttle type disaster during launch of nuke payload must be factored by Musk into his risk assessment considerations!
Any such disaster would have serious implications for mankind and could allow those Martians take over what’s left of Earth!
Musk, being a smart cookie, I’m sure has a contingency plan for this eventuality.
if its not armed it won’t do any damage. Assembly it in the ISS and the send it on its way.
I don’t think that will happen either. If a nuclear bomb was assembled on the ISS then it could be accidentally detonated on the ISS. If that happened the electromagnetic pulse released could do a good bit of damage. It could knock out telecommunications of a fair tract of the earth beneath the detonation. And if it was a large bomb, say 10 megatons or larger it could cause retinal burns to anyone on the ground directly below the explosion and who happened to be looking up.
Concorde couldn’t get clearance to break the sound barrier over populated areas I doubt NASA would be allowed to make nuclear bombs in low earth orbit.
NASA didn’t USAF did …years ago…
There is one other problem with the nuclear bomb plan that hasn’t been mentioned. Mars Ice caps are quite dusty. Nuking them could throw a lot of dust and dirt into Mars atmosphere, which might cause the dreaded ‘”nuclear winter” that is often discussed as a likely consequence of nuclear war on earth. Dust thrown up by a series of nuclear detonations have the potential to enter the upper atmosphere and remain there for years blocking sunlight from reaching the planets surface.this could mean that Mars would end up actually cooling rather than heating it up.
At any rate the process would certainly prevent photosynthesis taking place on the surface of mars for several decades afterwards so if any Astronauts were growing food in Martian greenhouses say, they would have find some other way to produce food for a while.
I am a great fan of Elon Musk but sometimes he can be downright stupid.
Even if we melted the Martian polar caps via H-Bombs the effect would be temporary.
Mars would be back to being “same old” Mars in a few decades.
Mars once had oceans,maybe even life, but that was 3,000,000,000+ years ago.
There may well be microbes clinging on there from billions of years ago.
But.
We would need to move Mars a bit closer to the warm Sun to achieve a permanent human- friendly atmosphere.
We are not yet able to move planets out of their orbits…at least the last time I checked.
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